U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) says former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department represents a national security threat.
Spokesman Mark Toner says the State Department will make many of the 9,400 still-unseen emails public this week, but the agency wants a one-month extension of its court-mandated January 29 deadline to unveil the electronic communication.
In a conversation with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Lankford wouldn't get into the specifics of what the emails contained, but said there are about 1,300 emails that contained classified information.
“That is some of the most sensitive type of information that would be out there, because people’s lives are on the line or sources are on the line, anything like that is ever uncovered,” Lankford said during the Sunday talk show.
Lankford serves on both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Some of the most contentious emails haven't yet been published – two an intelligence community auditor says are "top secret" and others he claims are even more sensitive, containing information from so-called special access programs, which can include details of sources of intelligence.
“Any information comes out that has any human intelligence connected to it or can confirm something that is out there in the public setting that people may wonder about, but they don’t know,” Lankford said. “But once the conversations starts, [an email hack] confirms it, it tells our adversaries they can get to a private server stored in New York outside the government’s system. Once they get that confirmation, it does do serious damage to our sources and methods.”
The State Department wants until February 29...that's five weeks from today.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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